My rating: 5 of 5 stars

John Windle introduced me to William Blake when I visited his store in San Francisco. I was interested in the Romantic poets but didn’t know much about Blake’s writing. I thought of him as an artist and engraver, not as a writer. This volume changed my mind. It was wonderful. A prefatory memoir by William Michael Rossetti was fabulous, introducing the man, his world and his works. Rossetti also provides a bounty of bibliographic information, including ownership and dates associated with original Blake poems and manuscripts. The memoir alone makes this a valued work.

The volume starts out with Blake’s Poetical Sketches, mostly work he did from about 12 until he was 20. It’s not that great, but then again, he was just starting out, finding his voice and working as an apprentice engraver to boot. However, these works show promise and development. I did feel a little foreshadowing of Wordsworth & Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads in some of Blake’s early pieces, especially his songs.

As he matured, his writing became more complex and engaged with the world. In Songs of Experience, the sections “Holy Thursday,” “The Garden of Love,” and “The Schoolboy” stood out. The words of “Holy Thursday” still resonates in today’s world of growing economic inequality:

Is this a holy thing to see In a rich and fruitful land, Babes reduced to misery, Fed with cold and usurous hand?” (p. 98)
In "The Grey Monk", Blake shines a light on what can happen in the aftermath of revolution:
”The hand of vengeance found the bed To which the purple tyrant fled; The iron hand crushed the tyrant’s head, And became a tyrant in his stead” (p. 166)
While I wasn’t that familiar with Blake when I picked up this volume, I realized that there was one poem of his I’d known for decades … a stanza from “Augeries of Innocence”:
“Every night and every morn Some to misery are born; Every morn and every night Some are born to sweet delight; Some are born to sweet delight Some are born to the endless night” (p. 183)
These lines were paraphrased in The Doors’ song “End of the Night,” off their first album, one of my top albums of all time.

Toward the end of this volume, there are a few short satirical pieces on the arts and artists. One that made me laugh (and cry) was a fictional dialogue about what the three parts of painting are. The oracle’s answers were: patronage, patronage, and patronage. Be it the turn of the 19th century or the 21st, patronage remains essential for the creation of all forms of art.

This Blake volume closes with Tiriel, a beautiful narrative poem that feels like a classical Greek play with large characters, tragedy and lessons to be learned. I thoroughly enjoyed it and could think of no better way to end this edition.

I wholeheartedly recommend Blake and this collection of his works. The one I read was The Poetical Works of William Blake, Lyrical and Miscellaneous (London: George Bell and Sons 1880). The edition was edited and included a memoir by William Michael Rossetti.